So, you're on staff... now what?

[Dessa]

Congratulations on becoming a member of the Sakura-Con staff family. Or, welcome back, if you've been part of us before.

Now, you may have heard something about these elusive 'staff forums', that only staff members have access to. Well, that's what this post is for! By following these easy steps, you too can have access to these secret forums!

1. Join staff! No, really. Kinda defeats the purpose of 'staff forums' if non-staff members can get in, right?

2. Get registered! This seems to be the biggest sticking point I've noticed when people ask me to put them in the staff group. If you know you've been hired, and haven't received a registration e-mail, get a hold of whomever hired you and remind them. If nothing still happens, go to their Manager (if they're a coordinator) or Director (if they're a manager). Not getting registered means you don't get a badge, and without a badge, how can you do your staff job or enjoy the con?

3. Filling out your registration form correctly This is the next biggest sticking point I've seen, and for a few reasons:
· a) When filling out the field marked SCMB Username, be sure to use your correct username. If it's misspelled or otherwise inaccurate, I can't find it.
· b) If you don't have an account, don't put anything in the SCMB Username field. It doesn't create an account, and, if someone already has that username you wanted to use, it would associate that person with you, and put them in the staff group in your place.
· c) Try to use the same e-mail to register for staff that's on your SCMB account. If I'm not given a username to search for, I search for e-mails, so if the e-mail is the same, I'll find you. If you want to change your SCMB account e-mail, you can do that through your User Control Panel (UCP). Note that this will deactivate your account, but it should be reactivated within 24 hours on most days.

4. Wait The hardest part, I know. I have no patience,either. But, it's much easier to add blocks of people at once than it is individual, so during slow periods of registration, I usually wait until I have a few, and try to add them all at once (usually on Sunday). Trust me, nothing super important is going on in there, and, when you register, you're also added to the staff mailing list, and anything important will be posted over that first (usually 'cuz right after it gets sent out, Mira sends me and Alex an e-mail saying "Hey, can this go on the message board and website?").

5. IF (and only if) you have not been added and it has been over a week and a half, send a PM to Dessa I might not have gotten to it yet, or there might've been a problem (e-mail doesn't match up, the manager hasn't done the final approval, so the confirmation hasn't gone through yet, etc.). Please wait until you've finished the first 4 steps, though! If you do PM me, please include the following:
· Your real name - this is what I'm looking for on the registration
· Your staff position - if I can't find your name on the huge list, I can narrow it down this way
· The e-mail you registered with - this one's the clinker. This lets me make a note in my database that the two e-mails (board and registration) go together.

There! Now you should have access to the staff forums. If not... well, let me know, and I'll check the boards and make sure they're working right, we've had a couple people who are in the staff group who still couldn't view the forums.